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Journey of the Heart

Cheri Anderson

What follows is a dark story.
And it’s mine.

I have always been a generally happy and passionate person. I never had to face poverty, or parents splitting up, or been so lonely life seemed worthless. God has always blessed me. I have two parents who came to Christ shortly before I was born and who have always loved me. They wanted better for me than they had received as kids, and started homeschooling me at five years old. For the next ten years they poured themselves into giving me a firm foundation in Christ.

The Descent

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. – 1 Peter 5:8 (KJV)

Have you ever got away with something? Maybe as a child you snuck into the kitchen and stole a cookie successfully. That cookie tasted pretty good, but unfortunately, the success and thrill of stealing remained longer than the sweet taste. When it came to getting in and out of trouble quickly, I was the smart kid in my family. I reveled in the thrill of getting away with small stuff and soon began trying bigger things. One of those big things was making friendships behind my parents’ back with people we all knew did not care about me.

If I had been caught early on, the sheer weight of my parents’ disapproval would have stopped me cold. However, because I was still talking the talk of a mature Christian on the outside, they never suspected a thing. At sixteen, I had perfected this façade, and guilt was suffocating my faith. I became extremely discouraged in my Christian walk. Because of my own hypocrisy, the insincere faith of the teens around me disgusted me. Satan used my own fatal faults to convince me that my faith, convictions, and authorities were the only things holding me back from life, and the only things I did not need.

A friend of mine once said, “Satan is not going to throw a huge sin right out on the sidewalk – he’s going to start with little things and slowly build up to bigger and bigger stuff until you are doing things you never thought you would do.” I found myself doing, saying, feeling, and enjoying things I never thought I would. But what I had not factored in were the people I was sacrificing in my “new lifestyle.” I never thought anyone but me would get hurt, but they did.

By the time I was seventeen, I was ready to bet that the life I had planned for myself was better than the life God had planned for me. I was in a reckless relationship with a young man who was as rebellious as I was. But still, my parents loved me.

God gave me parents who know me better than I know myself. They knew that down deep, I had not thrown in the towel on my faith, and honestly, it was true. The Spirit within me would not let me enjoy the “good times” I was trying to have. So, using the leverage of my extremely guilty conscience, they were able to lure me into our minivan and promptly transported me to a place called Verity.

The Ascent

Verity Institute is a Christian college-level program that helps students obtain a four-year bachelor degree in twenty-one months. Students commit to forgo dating, rock and roll, watching compromising movies, and treating each other in a defrauding manner through dress standards. When I arrived, I expected to find people leading double-lives, standards talked about but unlived. I was amazed to find that I was wrong. The students and staff at Verity truly cared about my spiritual condition and instead of just talking about God on Sundays, they lived God through their lives every day. They did activities on the weekends that were fun and honored God, and didn’t just thrill empty souls.

My faith began to live again. Slowly my affections for the people around me eclipsed the affections for the things I had left behind. I found my heart responding to the beauty of the hearts around me. My observations of the body of Christ working together, the strain of the tests, my disrespectful relationship with my parents, and the guilt of living a lie were gnawing at my heart. Finally, one winter night the overwhelming combination of all these elements broke me and I separated myself from the relationships that had come between my Savior and me.

The Test

The state of the heart is shown by the things that satisfy its desires. – John Piper

Girls want to be chased, to be won. It is a desire that can be satisfied two ways: through God and through man. After living at Verity for over a year, I had discovered that God had been chasing me. I had discovered that out of his love He would give me the desires of my heart in His time in His way without sacrificing friends and family. However, man’s love, no matter how shallow, is a very strong tie between two people, especially if that love is forbidden.

Two years later, the young man I had been involved with returned and offered me a life lived for me — a life of no expectations, no stress, of everything the world had to offer. After living at Verity for over a year, a “carefree” life seemed increasingly more appealing. As I stood with a ring in my hand, I realized how light it was. How easily broken the promises of the world are. I guess I also realized in that moment, that while I had been in and out of relationships, God had been with me, directing my life in spite of my best efforts to be unlovable. I handed the ring back to the man, and walked away.

Since then the story has lightened. There are good days and not so good ones. My life is not streamlined. Am I tempted in other ways? Yes. Am I tempted in some of the old ways? Yes. But do I have a reassurance like never before that I am in the family of God and He loves me like no one on earth ever will? Yes! God may bring you through the wilderness, but He gives us assurance even in that:

And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no. – Deut 8:2 (KJV)